Rishi wrote:http://www.truecrimereport.com/2011/08/kymberly_wimberly_denied_being.php?utm_source=scribol.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=scribol.com

A self-admitted "uneducated man," Kymberly Wimberly's father always encouraged his daughter to hit the books hard. She heeded his advice. Over her four years at McGehee Secondary School, Wimberly earned only a single "B" while taking a lion's share of honors and AP classes...
  

Wimberly's hard work not only earned her a 4.09 Grade Point Average (GPA). Out the graduating class of almost 100 students, her GPA made her class valedictorian.


At the beginning of May, Wimberly was informed that she had earned the prestigious post. Yet soon after the announcement went public, rumblings started to occur within the walls of the school and into the community at-large.


Almost within hours, Wimberly's mother, Molly Bratton, a media specialist at the school, overheard other staffers gossiping in the copy room, saying that Wimberly's status as valedictorian could cause a "big mess."


At the time, Bratton didn't know what to make of the catty chatter. Perhaps her co-workers were jealous. Perhaps they had an issue with the fact that Wimberly was a young mother who had given birth to a daughter her junior year.


Principal Darrell Thompson strolled into Bratton's office the following day. He told her Wimberly would share the podium with a co-valedictorian, who happened to be a white student and had a lower GPA than her daughter's.




Thompson told Bratton the co-valedictorians came about because the white student took more classes than Wimberly and when all things were factored in, their respective GPAs proved neck-in-neck.

Bratton would demand from the school superintendent the chance to speak before the school board to challenge the decision. School officials said she would have the opportunity, but only after the graduation ceremonies.

Both Wimberly and her fellow co-valedictorian spoke at the commencement in May. However, that did not bring at end to the controversy.

According to a complaint filed recently in Federal Court on Wimberly's behalf, the young mother was denied being her school's lone valedictorian because she is black. 

The suit, filed against the McGehee School District, its superintendent and the high school's principal, alleges the recent episode was but a microcosm of a greater "pattern and practice of school administrators and personnel treating the African-American students less favorably than the Cauacasian ones."  

Wimberly has already started taking class at the University of Arkansas, where she plans to major in biology. In her suit, she's asking for punitive damages and for the school record to be changed so that she alone is chronicled as the school's sole valedictorian for the class of 2011.